CRAIGSLIST'S UTOPIAN APPROACH TO CONQUERING THE $100 BILLION GLOBAL AD MARKET

Craigslists is expanding overseas to Europe and Asia. Awesome. I'm a free market, Republican, and I still love Craig Newmark's vision for his site:

Started 10 years ago by Craig Newmark, a Internet pioneer in San Francisco, as a way of keeping friends up to date on events in the Bay Area, Craigslist spread through the United States before going international in 2003, with sites in London and Toronto. The expansion accelerated late last year with a flurry of sites including ones for Paris, Berlin, Tokyo and Sydney. About a dozen other international start-ups are planned in the next few months.

Craigslist, which bills itself as a "community-based" operation in the techno-utopian spirit of the early Internet, accepts advertising for just about anything, from jobs to apartments to electronics to "erotic services." What it generally will not accept, however, is money. The sites let users post most classified advertisements for free. Only job ads posted in three U.S. cities require a fee.

"Our site is a place to get simple jobs done," Mr. Newmark said. "Life isn't fair, but we try to be fair to everyone. That's a fundamental value across the world, no matter where you come from."

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